From trucks carrying messages to ritualized identities: Implications for religious educators of the postmodern paradigm shift in media studies

Postmodern media scholarship suggests that mass media are best described as naturalized aspects of our cultural environment, raw materials we use in s haping our identities, our relationships, and our communities. Rather than being reliably produced and predictably consumed, mass-media "texts" provid e space for creative negotiation and even resistance between the author of a given media "text", the receiver of that text, and the context in which t he text is produced and consumed. In this landscape, the role of religious educator is one of giving people access to the symbolic, narrative, and sac ramental resources of our faith communities.